Mnenomics

What order do you do operations in, in math, when you've got a lot of them? Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally. er, I mean, Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. See how the first memorable phrase starts with the first letters of the words in the second?
Mnemonics are a psychological trick where you remember something by associating it with something novel, which your brain expects to do. The more associations (and the stranger), the better you can remember it. They're named after Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory (and apparently, arbitrary spelling. Pronounced "Nem-o-seen.")
Okay, so what kind of stars exist? Oh be a fine girl, kiss me. Ouch. Hey, I'm not literally hitting on you, it's the mnemonic. Lists their orders from hottest to coldest. Our sun's a G. Specifically, G2V, a little cooler than the average G, main sequence.
Okay, music. Those lines stand for notes, but which ones? Well, in the treble clef, "every good boy does fine." In the base clef, "Grizzly bears don't fly airplanes." Oh, and sharps appear in a particular order too: "Father Charles goes down and ends battles." (Flats are in the opposite order, if you'd care to write a mnemonic for that.)
In chemistry, equations always obey OIL-RIG. That is, oxidation is loss (of electrons), reduction is gain. Redox!
Mechanics. Which way do I turn the screw again? Righty tighty. So therefore, lefty loosy.
Electronics? They're color coded: "Bright Boys Rave Over Young Girls But Veto Getting Wed."
Biology? All life is elaborately classified. "Kings Play Chess On Fine Grained Sand." (Although the last two, Genus and Species, are unique enough to identify pretty much anything in existence.)
And if this isn't circular enough, remember this poem and all your circles will be correct:

Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling
In mystic force, and magic spelling
Celestial sprites elucidate
All my own striving can't relate
Or locate they who can cogitate
And so finally terminate.
Finis.

(Which, if you count the letters in each word, becomes Pi, to 31 digits, which is accurate enough for any dimensions of a circle the size of the universe, accurate to the width of a hydrogen atom. Trying to be more accurate than that in engineering is just being pedantic.)
Why do mnemonics work? Well, our brains are designed to keep novel and well connected information. any of these facts by themselves would just be discarded, but this gives a startling and well connected way of remembering, and any one component can bring the entire chain to mind. Also, because of a quirk of psychology, a dirty one works way better than a clean one.

Music Education

Once upon a time, I was a hobby musician who would engage in one hour music writing contests -- you had to write a song in one hour, songs are voted by the writers (excluding your own), and winner gets...bragging rights for the week. I even took a music class to become a better writer, which was linked to a singing class that I was no good at. I think it's hilarious that I got an A in the music writing, but an F in the actual performing, making me some sort of hypothetical musician. Can write great songs, but only in theory. And of course with the weekly contests...I was almost always last place.
Anyway, all I've studied music all my life, and all the crazy things I tried to do for just the write sound, are all quite familiar to an amazing group of musicians that I just discovered. Los Doggies are musicians who dissected for me tons and tons of incidental music. Video games. Animals. Telephones. All of them have a complex musical basis. The website takes them all apart, showing them sheet music, and even playing the sound note by note if you don't know how to read sheet music. (I can, not quite fast enough to play the song in question.) This site has taught me more about music than years and years of musical education in only a few minutes.
I'd like to know why. All of education could probably benefit if I could just figure out why this site is so engaging and informative.

Midterm Week

While I recover from midterm week (in which I could write no new articles and used up my buffer), I think I'll tell you the best way to study.
Read in stretches of fifteen minutes several days in advance of any big test. Take breaks every fifteen minutes -- psychology studies have shown that if you try to focus longer, your mind wanders and your efficiency at remembering goes way down. Schedule this at the end of your day, and go to bed at the end of it. As you sleep, your brain shifts the information into your long term memory, helping you to remember this before test time. Ideally, do this several days in a row.
Sometimes go back and read something you've already read. It feels stupid, but yes, sometimes you miss a thing or two, and the repetition, while boring, helps your brain remember.
On the day of the test, wake up early and have a big breakfast. Starved brains don't work very well. Try to exercise before the test as well.
If any of you are in school, good luck with your tests. If you are out of school, be glad that it is over.

Auto Learning

Remember those scenes in The Matrix where the heroes could learn anything in a few seconds by having it directly injected into their head? That was awesome.
To actually do that, we would have to understand completely how the human brain stores procedural memories, and modify that to obey the new set of skills. Perhaps we would do this by "patching," having someone have a complete brain scan, learning the skill, and then having a brain scan again. Noting how the neurons changed their configuration may explain how the brain "learned" that skill. Especially if we observe a particular pattern in doing that, and we try applying that pattern to someone who has not learned that skill. If that makes them learn the skill, then we have it.
This would drastically speed up education and training. Everyone could have a PhD level education in multiple fields, and very very exciting things would happen. Also, with such a high level of expertise going around, people would tend to be wealthy. If you want a new job, retraining yourself for an insanely high paying position takes minutes.
Now, this is very unlikely to happen with our knowledge the way it is. We know next to nothing about how the brain works. Almost any experiment we could do to find out more would be infinitely creepy and unacceptable. (Mess around with people's brains?!) Also, any change we do is more likely to make a person brain-damaged instead of smarter. Neurosurgeons in fact consider any modification they make to be brain damage of some kind, since it's as difficult to do as fixing a butterfly's wings with a hammer. While blindfolded. We only get one brain each, and not wanting it destroyed for the sake of science (or anything else) is reasonable and sane.

In which I persue a Baccalauréat

According to blogger SandWalk, all French university students must pass a philosophical test that they call Baccalauréat , which probably shares the same linguistic roots as the "Bachelor's" degree I'm pursuing.
Sandwalk says that the student has four hours to put together a comprehensive paper on one question. I'm going to try to answer both:

If you were one of the science students the questions were ....

1. Is it absurd to desire the impossible?
2. Are there questions which no science can answer?

Is it absurd to desire the impossible? This depends on the scope of impossible. The grossly unfeasible, the limited by reality, and the manifestly logically impossible all are dismissed under this one umbrella term. If we limited ourselves by feasibility, science would stagnate. After all, this computer I'm using now was grotesquely unfeasible a mere hundred years ago, yet here it is. And what is impossible now due to technological limits may be overcome in the future. If I did not butt my head against these things, I would be unworthy of the title of my blog.
However, some things are genuinely impossible, and cannot be overcome no matter how many resources are brought to bare. There are the logically impossible things, in which all results are disqualified. A four-sided triangle, for instance. Any figure you draw with four sides cannot be a triangle, so the task is a waste of time. Tasks which violate the universe's laws of physics, also, are futile. Since one never gets fruit from one's labors this way, wanting a logically impossible thing is absurd. The physically impossible is also absurd to desire, because your every attempt will be a failure. It is like trying to stand in mid-air, you get no result at best and at worst hurt yourself in the process. (By the way, just because we think it's physically impossible, that doesn't make it so, but thousands of failures with nothing approximating success tends to be a big hint.)
Since I see science as understanding the world in order to better enjoy it, pursuing unfeasible, unusual things is actually sane and rational, but pursuing the logically and physically impossible is an insane waste of time.
Are there questions no science can answer? Yes. Absolutely. Scientific ideas must be testable and falsifiable. "Falsifiable" means that there are in fact ways of proving that the idea is actually wrong. "What is the meaning of life?" is a non-falsifiable question, if I answer it in a ridiculous way, it can't be proven that my idea is wrong. If someone was to claim that the meaning of life was to collect 34 of all possible objects, I could not disprove that.
Other questions science cannot answer include "How should I live my life?" "Do deities exist?" "Why is there something instead of nothing?" and "What if none of this is real, it's all a simulation or just in my head?"

Okay, I think I just flunked out of French college, but in American college, I'm doing fine.

Homework is an old ball and chain

In England, as in the rest of the world, parents fight with their children about homework. The children don't want to do it, but the parents insist that future freedom is at stake. (Since chronic failure is no way to go through life, son.)
However, an English inventor decided the best way to emphasize the loss of future freedom was to take away existing freedom until the homework is done. British slacking children now can suffer being literally attached to a 21 pound ball until either their homework is done or 4 hours have elapsed. The heavy ball makes normal procrastination tasks like walking to the refrigerator and getting a snack, or walking to the phone to call your friends, much much more difficult.
This idea is not new, by any means. I've heard of American parents who tie their homework-refusing offspring to a chair as a way of insisting on homework time. And the ball at least has a time limit and safety key.
Also, the ball is apparently a joke invention. A chindogu, essentially. The tying to a chair, that was serious. Yikes.

Education is Slow and Shoddy

I think we do education all wrong in America.

I remember, as a young boy, getting the same lesson multiple times. I remember being so far ahead that I was in the top 3rd percentile. I remember doing decimal calculations 2 grades before being taught. I remember some teachers were very good indeed, encouraging the students under their tutelage to be the best people they could be. I also remember some teachers were power-tripping morons who apparently took the job because they got immense pleasure out of ordering small children around.
I've been in some kind of schooling since I was 4, and at least half of it was a complete waste of time. Now, the stated purpose of education is to prepare one with the facts and figures that one needs in postgraduate life. There is some liberal-arts that everyone is expected to know, and some specialty knowledge specific to your chosen field. You know the facts, you're ready to go.
Lots of time was lost to "discipline problems." Meaning that someone in the class would not STFU and the teacher had to stop and yell at them. Lots of time was lost to suddenly the professor just had to make a 30 minute rant about whatever was pissing him off that day. Lots of time was lost to circular questions in which neither student nor professor understood each other on any level.
I wonder if it is possible to complete secondary education (US grades 1 - 12) before one turns 12 years old. Currently, a 12th grade graduate is typically 18 years old. Would a longer day, or more intense instruction get it done faster? Or is brain maturity the bottleneck?
After all, I had classes up to my university sophmore (~14th grade) that were similar to my high school freshman (~9th grade) classes. Complete with the "CHRIST WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE, FIVE?!?!" rants when the students would not STFU and listen.
Mostly I'm disturbed by pundit-articles that claim that the actual purpose of the upper-level of education is to keep teenagers off the street. If they get an actual education out of this, is a secondary concern. It scares me because I think it may have been true. I've spent 1/3rd of my predicted lifespan in school, and much of it was, for no good reason, effectively the same as a prison sentence.
Although on the other hand, these articles also proposed replacing high school with apprenticeships. This would not work in every field. Of my two hypothetical careers, one, system administration, would work well as a master-apprentice relationship. The other, computer programmer, would not. Programmers need more education, and if you handed me a 12 year old, yes, they could write code, but it would hurt my productivity because I would have to rewrite everything my apprentice did. I would have to rewrite it because it would be inefficient and incorrect. My hypothetical apprentice just wouldn't be educated enough to do the job right.
I confirmed this with a psychologist friend of mine. A psychologist would not benefit from an apprentice, who would just lack the education to do anything other than schedule appointments and play secretary. Unless the apprenticeship consisted mostly of the psychologist helping the apprentice with the apprentice's homework, but that doesn't exactly help the psychologist, does it?
I think as a society we should educate faster to increase our productivity, if at all physically possible.

Education and the world of "Durr"

Again I have been asking people about the world's worst problems, and at last I have come to find someone who agrees with me, a government clerk. According to us, the world's worst problem is stupidity. Okay, so she said it was "ignorance," which only somewhat overlaps. In any case, people's lack of education and/or refusal to apply intellectual effort is a major problem that causes several others.

People not knowing any better is improving over time as education becomes less expensive, more extensive, more readily available, and more publicly funded. The libertarians like to complain about paying for other people's education, but it serves no one to have a nation of ignoramuses with no future. Especially if said ignoramus thinks that the best way to get money is to burgle your house, rob you, or run scams. (Some crime is, in a way, an industry. An industry that operates to public detriment.) If they do not do crime, they may turn to begging, which is both annoying and an eyesore. Or they abruptly die of hunger, thirst, or exposure. In any case, it will cost you money either way.

The economy especially benefits from education. Currently, the United States has a surplus of unskilled labor and a deficit of skilled labor. Companies don't want to hire people with little education because they would be too expensive to train, and people with little education also often have little money and do not feel they can afford an education, perpetuating the problem.

Little can be done about intellectual laziness other than loss of privileges and perhaps a swift slap to the back of the head. It's a social problem.

Engineerng Aphorisms

Work is good, but drudgery is evil. If there's a task that you really hate doing, you should work a thousand times harder to automate it so that you never have to do it again.

Adding extra workers to a late project makes it later. Not obvious, but different workers have different ideas of how to accomplish a given task, and errors will most likely occur on the interface between two different people's work. Some 85% of time is spent fixing those errors.

Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. --Derek Bok

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent --Isaac Asimov

The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?" (rimshot)

In a mad world, only the mad are sane. --Akiro Kurosawa

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. -- Mark Twain

No matter how complicated a problem is, it usually can be reduced to a simple, comprehensible form which is often the best solution. -- An Wang

Technical Language

Engineering involves a lot of technical language, much of which is actually less complex than it sounds.

Take This cartoon involving two groups of people trying to out-engineer the other, one is trying to find the other without being detected, and the second is trying to foil this.

The ultimate gag is a "Connector Ejector" that causes a part to fall out of the opposing machine, sabotaging it. So the good guys find out where the evil guys are...but the evil guys know that they're coming.

Now the ultimate setup (each part involves the entire name of the previous part, for hilarious reasons,) is the "Quantum vector collector inspector detector deflector projector protector connector ejector." Certainly a complex sounding compound idea, but each of these can be broken down conceptually so that even a 4th grade student could understand it.

Quantum

From the Latin "Quantus," meaning "How much," it has come to mean "Immensely small, on the atomic scale." So this device involves really tiny particles.

Vector

A mathematical idea involving a number that is not only a quantity, but also a direction. Very commonly used in physics, where things like velocity and acceleration are affected not only by how much, but in what way. Changing directions affects things at least as much as speeding up or slowing down.

In this case, only the "direction" part matters. So far it is "using small particles to find a direction."

Collector


To "Collect" is to "Gather up." This is the villain's first counter measure, gathering up the quantum vectors so that the heroes cannot read them.

Inspector


To "inspect" is to "examine." This part of the device checks for the gathering of quantum vectors, and presumably has some way of retrieving them if they are being collected.

Detector


Like the inspector, the detector can tell if something happens...in this case, the villains can detect the snooping around of the heroes.

Calling a device a "detector" implies it to be more of a passive sensing than an "inspector." An "inspector" would actively search for the condition, while a "detector" would more passively watch for it.

If you can see the picture, it shows a smoke detector, a device that can sense if smoke is present in the room. Most smoke detectors I know aren't very good at it, being set off by cooking smoke, or even steam from a shower.

Deflector


To "Deflect" is to "bounce off." So this device would "bounce off" anything that the detector used to detect, foiling it. The heroes would then be free to find the villains without fear of detection.

Projector

Meaning "A device that throws forward." Most Americans are familiar with light projectors that project a still image on a flat surface, and film projectors, that does the same with a continuous film strip to produce a moving one.

This one "throws forward" something to harm the deflector, foiling the heroes' security system once again.

Protector

To protect something is to keep it safe from harm, so this device would somehow absorb or make harmless whatever it is that the projector throws forward.

Connector

Complex machines are not generated by magic. They are constructed from simpler machines, often factory made. These simpler machines must be connected together in the right configuration to do a complex job.

In fact, a modern computer could not be made by any one person anymore. You need a team of 20 to design even the central parts. The parts only work because the simpler parts (which one person knows how to make) can be connected together by experts until a complex design emerges.

So the villain's final stab at victory is to mess with his opponent's machine directly.

(Yes, the connection points ARE the weakest point in modern manufacturing. This will continue to be the case unless some kind of magical teleportation gets invented.)

Ejector

To "eject" is to "throw out." So an ejector throws something out of a machine. In this case, it removes one part from the hero's machine. Namely, the "Protector" part, and anything attaching it to the rest of the machine.

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So for this strip, team evil was just SLIGHTLY smarter than team good, and team good accidentally tipped their hand. But team good won in the end. And you got to learn a whole bunch of fancy words that might even help you invent something*.


* Inventions may be slightly or totally insane and/or non-practical.